Tablets, laptops, phones (e.g., cellular or satellite), mobile (vehicular) or portable (personal) two-way radios, and other mobile computing devices are now in common use by users, such as first responders (including firemen, police officers, and paramedics, among others), and provide such users and others with instant access to increasingly valuable additional information and resources such as vehicle histories, arrest records, outstanding warrants, health information, real-time traffic or other situational status information, and any other information that may aid the user in making a more informed determination of an action to take or how to resolve a situation, among other possibilities.
Many such mobile computing devices further comprise, or provide access to, electronic digital assistants (or sometimes referenced as “virtual partners”) that can provide the user thereof with valuable information in an automated (e.g., without further user input) or semi-automated (e.g., with some further user input) fashion. The valuable information provided to the user can be based on explicit requests for such information posed by the user via an input (e.g., such as a parsed natural language input or an electronic touch interface manipulation associated with an explicit request) in which the electronic digital assistant may reactively provide such requested valuable information, or can be based on some other set of one or more context or triggers in which the electronic digital assistant may proactively provide such valuable information to the user absent any explicit request from the user.
As some existing examples, electronic digital assistants such as Siri provided by Apple, Inc.® and Google Now provided by Google, Inc.®, are software applications running on underlying electronic hardware that are capable of understanding natural language, and may complete electronic tasks in response to user voice inputs, among other additional or alternative types of inputs. These electronic digital assistants may perform such tasks as taking and storing voice dictation for future reference and retrieval, reading a received text message or an e-mail message aloud, generating a text message or e-mail message reply, looking up requested phone numbers and initiating a phone call to a requested contact, generating calendar appointments and providing appointment reminders, warning users of nearby dangers such as traffic accidents or environmental hazards, and providing many other types of information in a reactive or proactive manner.
While existing electronic digital assistants may be capable of providing individualized and automated answers to user-posed questions and/or providing proactive notices or other types of information, particular communications markets such as public safety first responders typically use communications devices such as two-way radios and/or broadband push-to-talk services that implement group-based communications models. Such same or different communications markets may also provide control or dispatch stations that are used to monitor one or more group communications in such group-based communications models. However, existing electronic digital assistants do not integrate with these environments and fail to leverage the group-based communications models and control or dispatch stations in a technically useful and user-intuitive manner.
Thus, there exists a need for an improved technical method, device, and system for a group-based communications model including a controller for communicatively coupling between end user communication device(s) initiating an electronic digital assistant session and one or more dispatch consoles associated with the end user communication device(s) so that commanders, dispatchers, or other command or monitoring-type users may be automatically joined to monitor electronic digital assistant sessions of users that they are associated with, among other technical benefits and advantages.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.